Filming for "Fast & Furious 7" is driving an economic boost for Salida

More than 300 crewmembers have crowded Monarch ski area's parking lot for the past three weeks for filming of "Fast & Furious 7." The production is delivering an economic boost to Salida. (Jason Blevins, The Denver Post)

SALIDA — The group rescued 216 Ferraros on a slow Sunday, lining the restaurant's bar, filling tables and ordering big.

"Great tippers, too," said Diamond Redfeather, the gregarious bartender at the Italian restaurant.

The story is the same across Salida, where 300 crew members are dining, shopping and filling hotels while they work on filming the seventh installment of the "Fast & Furious" franchise up on Monarch Pass.

"They are taking care of us when we shouldn't be busy at all," Redfeather said.

The engine-revving movie is turbo-charging Salida, just as it did Colorado Springs a month ago when the crew filmed on Pikes Peak. For the past three weeks, hundreds of crew members have packed the parking lot at Monarch ski area. U.S. 50 closes every so often while the filmmakers capture mountaintop scenes with exploding RVs, rolling Mercedes-Benzes and souped-up Dodge Chargers racing up and down Monarch Pass.

Production crews have taken over the lodge and paid the ski area $40,000 to use the base area, where a catering team works all day preparing meals for workers. A fundraiser for the 13-year-old Buena Vista girl whose family was killed in a recent rockslide has harvested several thousand dollars. Camera crews are filming scenes on the mountain's dirt roads, as well as on U.S. 50.

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The road closure is a hassle, but the benefit is huge for Salida, which would typically be ramping down for the offseason in early October, huddling until the winter crowds arrive for skiing. Hotels are packed with the 250 to 300 crew members who are spending more than three weeks in town. Restaurants are jamming as the crews spend their daily stipends. Locals are earning cash as extras, shuttle drivers and other part-time help. Crews rented equipment in Colorado. Members of the local State Patrol are earning overtime helping direct traffic during filming. The movie's producers hired 68 Colorado residents in Salida and Colorado Springs.

"Everyone's a little tired, but that's awesome, especially this time of year," said Brett Ziehmke from behind the bar at his Benson's Tavern and Beer Garden.

The producers of the film estimated they would spend about $13 million in Colorado, which includes 4,000 room nights in Salida and Colorado Springs. That return is the reward behind the state's fledgling film-incentive program, which lawmakers revived in spring 2012 with $4 million aimed at luring moviemakers to the state.

The film-incentive program promises up to 20 percent returns on production spending. But makers of "Fast & Furious 7" really wanted to come to Colorado, so film commissioner Donald Zuckerman was able to negotiate a package that cost the state only $700,000.

"We knew they were going to come. The question was: How much would they spend?" Zuckerman said, noting that the Colorado Office of Film, Television and Media will be included on the movie's website and that producers have offered footage to help promote the state.

The movie — with fantastic car chases starring Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham and Vin Diesel, who are not working in Colorado but at production sites in Georgia — is the largest ever for the nascent film-incentive program. And it helps the 16-month-old program recover after losing Hallmark's "When Comes the Heart" television series, which producers planned to film in Telluride before budget concerns drove production to Vancouver, British Columbia, where cash film incentives eclipse Colorado's, Zuckerman said.

"What's happening in Salida is the whole idea behind the incentives," he said. "You can see there is a lot of good stuff happening, and if we had a better budget, we could get a lot more stuff like this."

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